Portland saw a 25 percent increase in overdoses in 2019 compared to the year before — and seven fatal and 79 non-fatal overdoses in illegal drugs since May 1, according to police.
“There have historically been upticks in overdoses here in the city at this time of the year,” police chief Frank Clark said Monday, “but the recent spike and this number of overdoses and deaths over a 70 day period is disturbing and warrants public awareness and notification.”
[Image by Alyssa Joy Bartlett]
Fatal drug overdoses climbed 7 percent in 2019 in Maine, but remain below their peak in 2017, with 380 Mainers dying from drug overdoses, up from 354 in 2018. Drug overdose deaths peaked at 417 in 2017.
The increase in 2019 of overdoses in Portland, meanwhile, contrasts sharply with the rest of the state. The total number of overdoses in emergency departments declined by approximately 7 percent from 2017 to 2018, the most recent years available, according to a report by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. The subset of drug overdoses involving opioids of any type declined approximately 14 percent over the same period, while heroin overdoses declined by approximately 21 percent.
The spike in overdoses is not yet linked to one specific substance, according to the statement.
Naloxone, an overdose-reversal drug also known as Narcan, was administered in most of the non-fatal cases, according to the statement. Between 2008 and 2019, Portland had 373 deaths that were attributed to overdoses.
Clark encouraged people to use the 20 needle drop-off sites within Portland or to call the city Public Works Department at 207-874-8493 if they find needles.
State police sayJon Ladd, 36, of Medway showed signs of recent drug use when Trooper Dana Austin responded to the scene of where Ladd had passed out.
ORLAND, Maine — A man who passed out behind the wheel Saturday evening was charged with drug trafficking in Orland.
State police say Jon Ladd, 36, of Medway showed signs of recent drug use w
After a search of Ladd’s car, 10 grams of fentanyl and $1,727 in cash were found.hen Trooper Dana Austin responded to the scene of where Ladd had passed out.
Ladd was arrested and charged with aggravated trafficking of schedule w drugs.
Jamieson Snyder was arrested Monday after he jumped out a window trying to avoid police. Officials found suspected heroin/fentanyl, cocaine, and crack on Snyder.
BIDDEFORD, Maine — A man recently released from prison who had a nationwide warrant for his arrest was arrested Monday after jumping out a second story window in Biddeford.
Maine State Police say Jamison Snyder, 47, of Biddeford was wanted in a drug trafficking case. Snyder was recently released from prison but had already violated his probation. He had 7 years o9-year9 year sentence still pending.
Police spoke to several people who said Snyder was acting strange and appeared to be under the influence of narcotics.
Around 6 p.m. Biddeford Police arrived at a Main Street Apartment looking for Snyder.
A woman would not open the door saying she needed to get dressed while an officer watching from the street saw Snyder jump from the second-floor window onto ice injuring his head.
When police surrounded Snyder his head was bleeding and he refused to show his hands and was tased.
Police found a plastic bag containing suspected heroin/fentanyl, cocaine, and crack in Snyder’s hand.
At the hospital, authorities found a large amount of cash on his person. Snyder is being charged with aggravated trafficking.
Snyder is presently being held at Maine Medical Center under police guard and will be transported to the York County Jail upon his release.
The Massachusetts attorney general is targeting Purdue Pharma and eight members of the Sackler family who own the company, alleging in a lawsuit they are “personally responsible” for deceptively selling OxyContin.
The attorney general, Maura Healey, sat down with “CBS This Morning.” She alleges the Sackler family hired “hundreds of workers to carry out their wishes” – pushing doctors to get “more patients on opioids, at higher doses, for longer, than ever before” all while paying “themselves billions of dollars.”
In her lawsuit, Healey names eight members of the family that own Purdue Pharma, alleging they “micromanaged” a “deceptive sales campaign.” In the conclusion to the complaint, Healey said the Sackler family used the power at their disposal to engineer an opioid crisis. Almost 400,000 people died from opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2017, according to the CDC.
Healey said this is the most complete picture to date of how the opioid crisis began, and why the Sackler family itself should be held accountable. “They don’t want to accept blame for this. They blame doctors, they blame prescribers and worst of all, they blame patients,” Healey said.
Purdue Pharma called the accusations “a rush to vilify” the drugmaker. There’s a lot in the lawsuit that’s still redacted, and lawyers for Purdue plan to argue on Friday that it should stay that way.
Healey said Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family are one and the same.
In one alleged instance, then-president Richard Sackler devised what Healey describes as Sackler’s “solution to the overwhelming evidence of overdose and death,” writing in a confidential email, “we have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible. They are the culprits and the problem.”
In a statement, Purdue Pharma said the lawsuit “distorts critical facts” and “cherry-picked from among tens of millions of emails and other business documents.”
To that, Healey said, “If Purdue thinks we’re cherry picking, I invite them to produce all of their documents and let the public judge for itself.”
CBS News reached out to the members of the Sackler family named in the complaint, as well as their lawyer. Three declined comment through a press representative and we never heard back from the rest. But this is a family that rarely addresses its connection to the company that made it rich.
Jonathan Burke, a former addict, suggested Sackler take a dose of his own medicine. “I would personally tell him to take two a day for two weeks and see how he ends up,” Burke said.
Burke said his battle with addiction began 11 years ago, with a dirt bike accident and a two-month prescription of OxyContin. Just two weeks later, he was hooked.
“I’ll be 29 on Friday and didn’t think I’d make it to 25, to be honest,” Burke said. “The way that your brain becomes re-hardwired after an addiction is just absolutely insane.”
Burke later turned to illegal drugs and ended up stealing to fund his habit. “It literally damaged every relationship with every family member, friend, person I acquired in my life,” he said.
Burke’s home state of Massachusetts is one of 36 states now suing Purdue Pharma, accusing the company of downplaying the dangers of OxyContin. In a 2007 federal settlement, the company admitted to falsely selling the drug as “less addictive” than rival products. The company paid $630 million in fines.
Purdue Pharma told CBS News in a statement: “Massachusetts’ amended complaint irresponsibly and counterproductively casts every prescription of OxyContin as dangerous and illegitimate, substituting its lawyers’ sensational allegations for the expert scientific determinations of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and completely ignoring the millions of patients who are prescribed Purdue Pharma’s medicines for the management of their severe chronic pain.
In a rush to vilify a single manufacturer whose medicines represent less than 2 percent of opioid pain prescriptions rather than doing the hard work of trying to solve a complex public health crisis, the complaint distorts critical facts and cynically conflates prescription opioid medications with illegal heroin and fentanyl, which are the leading cause of overdose deaths in Massachusetts. Throughout the complaint, the Commonwealth disregards basic facts about Purdue’s prescription opioid medications including that:
• FDA, the scientific agency charged with approving and regulating medicines in the U.S., has approved OxyContin and other Purdue opioid medications as safe and effective for their intended use;
• Prescription opioids are among the most tightly controlled medicines in the United States, and Purdue’s OxyContin is a Schedule II controlled substance, meaning that it is in a class of medicines with the highest level of control by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA);
• The first information that healthcare providers see when reading the FDA-approved label for OxyContin is a prominent “black box” warning that includes information about the risks of addiction and overdose; and
• Purdue promoted its opioid medications based on the medical and scientific evidence in the FDA approved label and did so to licensed physicians who have the training and responsibility to ensure that medications are properly prescribed.
The Attorney General’s allegations also omit key facts about FDA’s regulation of opioid medications:
• In April 2010, FDA approved a reformulated version OxyContin, which Purdue developed with properties intended to deter abuse. Purdue worked for over a decade to develop the new formulation, and it was the first FDA-approved opioid with abuse deterrent properties;
• The Massachusetts Attorney General commended the FDA for supporting abuse-deterrent formulations and later required insurers to cover them; and
• FDA has directly addressed many of the issues within the Massachusetts’ complaint and has continued to determine that Purdue Pharma’s opioids are safe and effective for their intended use.
Perhaps one of the biggest omissions in the Attorney General’s complaint is that, in 2013, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services determined that Purdue had fulfilled its requirements under a 2007-2012 Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) relating to the marketing of its medications and released Purdue from the agreement. Furthermore, during the term of this five-year agreement, Purdue had submitted annual reports to a designated OIG monitor and had engaged an Independent Review Organization that evaluated specified elements of Purdue’s compliance program on an periodic basis to assess compliance with the terms of the CIA.
To distract from these omissions of fact and the other numerous deficiencies of its claims, the Attorney General has cherry-picked from among tens of millions of emails and other business documents produced by Purdue. The complaint is littered with biased and inaccurate characterizations of these documents and individual defendants, often highlighting potential courses of action that were ultimately rejected by the company.
Purdue and the individual defendants will aggressively defend against these misleading allegations. In the meantime, we continue to fight for balance in the public discourse so that society can simultaneously help pain patients in need and create real solutions to the complex problem of addiction.”
A new report claims Purdue Pharma, the drug company accused of helping engineer and profit from the opioid epidemic, also considered expanding into addiction treatment. The ProPublica article is purportedly based on secret parts of a lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts against Purdue and members of the Sackler family who own the company. The suit alleges Purdue deceptively sold OxyContin and downplayed its dangers. Purdue says it will continue to defend itself.
According to ProPublica, blacked out portions of the documents apparently show Purdue wanted to capitalize on addiction treatment. The article cites “internal correspondence” between Purdue Pharma executives discussing how the “sale” and treatment of opioid addiction are “naturally linked.” ProPublica goes on to report, “while OxyContin sales were declining, the internal team at Purdue touted the fact that the addiction treatment marketplace was expanding.”
ProPublica specifically names Kathe Sackler as being involved with a secretive project called “Project Tango,” which was allegedly meant to help Purdue break into the addiction treatment market.
The redacted documents also reportedly show that Richard Sackler “complained” over email that an OxyContin Google alert “was giving him too much information about the drug’s dangers.”
In an interview with CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said the Sackler family doesn’t “want to accept blame for this.”
“They blame doctors, they blame prescribers and worst of all, they blame patients,” Healey said.
In a statement, Purdue Pharma called the release of the redacted information “part of a continuing effort to single out Purdue, blame it for the entire opioid crisis, and try the case in the court of public opinion rather than the justice system.”
According to a court order, the state has until midday Friday to release the redacted information. It is unclear who released it early.
The Massachusetts attorney general’s office told CBS News it did not release the redacted information and would not confirm the information in ProPublica’s article.
Prosecutors say Locklear, his 22-year-old daughter, Alexis Locklear, and her boyfriend, 39-year-old Christopher Murray, shot Wayne Lapierre and his wife, Diem, at their home in Millinocket in December 2017.
Wayne Lapierre died at a hospital three days later, and his wife survived her injuries.
Authorities say Wayne Lapierre was targeted because he was a licensed medical marijuana grower who owned multiple businesses.
Alexis Locklear is expected to change her plea Jan. 22. Murray’s trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 28.
Two men arrested in suspected heroin overdose death
Kevin Camp, 41, of Auburn and Frank Lynch, 33, of Leeds are charged with drug trafficking that is expected to be elevated to aggravated trafficking once the autopsy for man is finalized.
AUBURN, Maine — Police have arrested two men and charged them with drug trafficking after another man died Sunday morning.
Auburn Police say they were called to a home on Riverside Drive for an unresponsive man around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 27. Police say crews tried to save the 29-year-old man but he did not respond to CPR and other life-saving efforts.
Police believe the man died of a heroin drug overdose which launched an investigation that led officials to the home of Kevin Camp at 26 Fifth Street in Auburn. Police found 10 grams of heroin at Camp’s home and other drug-trafficking evidence.
Camp, 41, of Auburn and Frank Lynch, 33, of Leeds were arrested and charged with drug trafficking and violation of conditional release.
Police say the drug charges for both men are expected to be elevated to aggravated trafficking once the Medical Examiner’s Office has finished the autopsy of the man who they suspect overdosed.
WARREN (NEWS CENTER Maine) — Maine’s Corrections Department announced Friday the death of a 50-year-old Maine State Prison inmate.
Christopher Q. Nault died shortly before 6:45 a.m. Friday, the department said.
Details regarding the prisoner’s death were not disclosed.
Following protocol, state police and the medical examiner’s officer were notified.
Nault was serving a two-year probation revocation, which began on Jan. 5, 2018.
According to prison records found online, Nault was sentenced on Jan. 2 in Somerset County court, and his earliest custody release date was slated for July 2 of next year.
SANFORD (NEWS CENTER Maine) — A wanted fugitive from the Sanford village of Springvale was taken into custody Friday by federal and local law enforcement.
The FBI announced Wednesday a $5,000 tip leading to Joshua Patrick Weldon’s arrest.
A spokesperson said the FBI safely took Weldon into custody at about 3 p.m. in Sanford with assistance from Maine State Police and the Sanford Police Department.
Weldon, who was considered armed and dangerous, had been wanted on a bail violation stemming from an Aug. 13 fentanyl-related charge, as well as evading officers on Nov. 6, according to the FBI.
“We’ve received dozens of tips over the last few days which were invaluable in bringing the investigation to a successful conclusion,” the spokespersons said. “We thank the public for its assistance.”
After taking a painkiller, at the age of 18, Maddie became addicted, and eventually died from an overdose in Burlington, Vermont.
The love and support her family received when the tribute went viral has been “wonderful”, Kate says, adding: “We hope this goes some way to reducing the social stigma of addiction.”
On Wednesday, President Trump signed a new bill to help tackle the epidemic, but Maddie’s family says the country is failing to support the 2 million Americans addicted to opioids, a class of drug that includes heroin and prescription drugs like painkillers.
Last year, 72,000 people in America died from a drugs overdose, the highest number in history. The sharpest increase were deaths from fentanyl.
Maddie Linsenmeir
“My sister was a beautiful, bright woman. She had wanted to star in Broadway musicals and she had the voice for it. She was exuberant in her love and affection for everyone,” Kate, who is 46 and lives in Philadelphia, says.
Maddie first took what turned out to be a highly addictive painkiller called Oxycontin at a party when she was a teenager.
She quickly became an addict, and in the US, drugs are easy to get hold of. Authorities have seized enough fentanyl to kill every single American.
American doctors widely prescribe opioids for pain management, and pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise drugs on television, including in primetime slots such as the Superbowl in 2015.
“Loving someone addicted to drugs is really tough and being addicted to drugs is really hard,” Kate explains.
“Being a drug addict is the same kind of drudgery as normal life – getting up, going to work, paying bills. But it is much harder – you’re trying to get up and get the money for a score.”
‘Very low lows’
In the 12 years between that first pill and her death, Maddie tried many times to get clean.
“Whenever she was using she wanted to end it. Sometimes it would be every couple of months, and she would hit very low lows,” Kate explains.
“She tried so hard, and that’s the thing that people don’t understand – America makes it very hard to get clean.”
Maddie was failed by institutions and systems that should have helped her overcome her addiction, her family says.
left to right: sisters Maura, Kate, Maddie, and their mother Maureen
“Any doctor in this country can prescribe highly addictive painkillers, but to prescribe medicine shown to help patients recover, doctors have to get a special waiver.
“It’s very hard to get methadone [a heroin substitute that can help reduce addiction over time], people have to stand in line in a clinic. How can you hold down a job like that?”
Kate says there were many times when her sister drove hours across Vermont state to get a bed in a recovery centre but when she arrived, it was given away or there was none available.
When in jail for minor drug offences, there was no medically assisted treatment.
‘Not a person’
This repetitive cycle was interspersed with moments of great joy and happiness for the family.
“One of my best memories is when she had Ayden – seeing how much she loved him, her singing to him. She would take him for walks to the woods or lake, no matter the weather. It was beautiful, she loved being his Mum,” Kate explains.
Ayden will now be adopted by Kate’s sister Maura and her husband.
Kate says that if Vermont, the state that elected left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders, was unable to help Maddie get clean, then she believes there is currently little hope for the rest of America:
“They failed her and continue to fail addicts.”
She advocates safe injection sites or harm reduction programmes that aim to reduce the negative consequences of drug use, including overdose.
But these programmes are not widely supported by the authorities. “They don’t want to condone people taking drugs,” Kate believes.
Kate says people have stopped seeing drug addicts as people.
Describing officials and doctors who visibly changed their attitude to Maddie once they learned about her illness, she says she was routinely shocked by the lack of empathy for addicts:
“Police officers, lawyers, correctional officers – when they found out someone is an addict, they see a junkie, not a person with a disease who is suffering.”
Kate is at pains to point out that although her young, good-looking sister has attracted global attention, that shouldn’t overshadow the plight of the thousands of less photogenic addicts who are also suffering.
“If people feel empathy for Maddie, they should feel that for addicts at their lowest, who may be begging on the streets or injecting under bridges.”
She also wrote the obituary to speak to people working in the system who helped her sister.
“She was touched by individuals who just went above and beyond.
“After he read it, a man sent us a message saying he had been sober 18 years, and he would stay sober that day for Maddie.”
I do feel a little guilt indulging in an actual street drug, but as opiates always have taken my emotional pain away, it took my guilt away too.
Over the years I have noticed that many opiate addicts are trying to numb something and speed or cocaine addict’s usually tend to feel disconnected and numb to begin with and uppers help them to feel more alive and part of the world. It’s like I’ve said for a long time heroin is my normal and without it I feel something’s missing, or wrong. And as soon as it’s in my body I feel normal, like it’s the missing piece of me. When I’ve done uppers it has sent me into debilitating anxiety, and its a horror show. I can’t breathe and I want to hid from the world. I’m horrified. I already have anxiety so being stimulated and magnifying that is not what I need.
I have a friend, however who’s drug of choice is speed and she tells me she often doesn’t feel anything. She lacks desire for life, motivation, feels disconnected and lethargic also fells something is missing from herself. When she gets speed in her then she gets inspired, energy, motivation, excitement from the world, fells a part of instead of withdrawn. She also says she doesn’t feel normal or a part of the world until sh gets her drug. She says it’s what’s missing from her with out it she doesn’t want to get out of bed.
Without my drug I can’t get out of bed. I envy other addicts who can do their drug without getting sick when they don’t have it. Even hen you want to do differently and try to get sober , you can’t. You get sick.
Maddie, who died aged 30 in September, and her son Ayden
Maddie Linsenmeir
left to right: sisters Maura, Kate, Maddie, and their mother Maureen
Maddie’s son Ayden will be adopted by her sister
The Recovery Through Wholeness Chalkboard 